THE WEEK AHEAD: October 29-November 04

[art: emily balivet]Like hosts to the spookiest party ever, both Mercury (29°) and retrograde Venus (00°) prepare to simultaneously slip out of Scorpio at either end on the eve of Hallowmas (Halloween). Meanwhile the intense Scorpio Sun intensely also hounds after Jupiter, who after a year will soon exit from this darkest of transits and enter his domicile in Sagittarius (Nov 8). This, coupled with the Nodes shifting to Cancer/Capricorn and Uranus returning to Aries, jettisons us all into a whole new level of experience.

But for now, let us please watch to see what happens when the coven of Scorpionic energies, passionately intensified to make an effect, powerfully consort and collude with what is arguably the “Hottest Holiday of 2018”. Yes, it’s even “bigger than Jesus!” and “hotter than hell” this year.

This Wednesday… it’s the Halloween to end all Halloweens™.

Whilst 1st November is officially the Christian holy-day of ‘All Saints’, or ‘Hallowmas’, the pagans elected the night before (october 31st) to feast their celebration of the awesome Dark Goddess – an evening where snakes and spiders, animal totems of the Moon Goddess’ witchy powers. To this day, many tricks (and treats) are played, ghoulish costumes worn in the tradition conjuring up irrational terror, and wild parties of licentious and devious conduct still prevail. On the night before Samhain, the barrier between the worlds becomes whisper-thin and magical… where ancient, atavistic spirits cry out songs of heady, grisly serenade to those who care (or rather, dare) to hear them.

We kind of need it. In a world so damned dehumanised by electronics and special effects, sanitised and sensitised by the frenzied hysteria of political correctness and devoid of much warmth, empathy and meaningfulness, we observe that we have strayed considerably away from the magic and mystery of our past. As such, we’ve become conditioned and crippled by fear, devaluing or dissociating ourselves from the darker aspects of our psyche, as symbolised by the deepest part of the night.

Our repressed and hidden selves conceal the wisdom of our night dreams. For instance, our understanding and acceptance of the death-phase of life’s cycles; the shadow of our unconscious; the menstrual and menopausal phases of the feminine; as well as the wild revelry of shamanism, magic and occult divination (☿ △ Ch). The terrifying phenomenon of mortal fear has seen many resort to extreme reactions, clutching to either their bibles or their guns, as ways to settle arguments (☿☌ ♃).

Nowadays, in late 2018 – as our dear-old consumer-driven patriarchal world enters his barren, desolate winter of his discontent, it seems the harvest of 250 years of ‘industrial age’ also needs to be divested of its fears and 3D terrors.

Here are the main transits for this week:

♂∠♄

Mon Oct 29

10:48

Mars

19°♒44′

Semisquare

Saturn

04°♑44′

☿☌♃

Mon Oct 29

11:05

Mercury

27°♏49′

Conjunction

Jupiter

27°♏49′

☿△ Ch

Tue Oct 30

01:57

Mercury

28°♏36′

Trine

Chiron

28°♓36′℞

♀□☊

Tue Oct 30

17:29

Venus

00°♏37′℞

Square

Node

00°♌37′

☿ in ♐

Wed Oct 31

04:39

Mercury

00°♐00′

♀☍♅

Wed Oct 31

08:47

Venus

00°♏15′℞

Opposition

Uranus

00°♉15′℞

☿⊼♅

Wed Oct 31

09:36

Mercury

00°♐15′

Quincunx

Uranus

00°♉15′℞

☿△☊

Wed Oct 31

16:27

Mercury

00°♐36′

Trine

Node

00°♌36′

☽□☉

Wed Oct 31

16:41

Moon

08°♌12′

Square

Sun

08°♏12′

♀ in ♎

Wed Oct 31

19:43

Venus

00°♏00′℞

♃△ Ch

Thu Nov 01

17:31

Jupiter

28°♏31′

Trine

Chiron

28°♓31′℞

♀ Sqq ♆

Sat Nov 03

00:18

Venus

28°♎50′℞

Sesquiquadrate

Neptune

13°♓50′℞

☿∠♇

Sat Nov 03

13:55

Mercury

04°♐02′

Semisquare

Pluto

19°♑02′

♀⊼ Ch

Sat Nov 03

18:19

Venus

28°♎27′℞

Quincunx

Chiron

28°♓27′℞

With Jupiter ending his 12-month span through Scorpio, it is a well-observed phenomenon that many areas of our hidden past have had to surface in order for us to process and move forward. The depths of our unconscious, best plumbed out through work of psychotherapy, dreamwork, hypnosis, past-life regression, epigenetics, and breathwork – techniques receiving spurious or only borderline acceptance, if any at all by the established medical sciences.

Various support groups, 12-step programs, ‘transformative’ or ‘healing’ workshops have too, created tremendous help to facilitate processes that have the power to take us through our addictions and wounds into our recoveries. Yet, among these there has been the proliferation of all kinds of abuses and charlatanism, which sometimes leaves as much damage as it purports to heal. We have much to explore here.

What’s even more mysterious, yet filled with apprehension is the study and techniques of the mantic arts of witchcraft, mysticism, the occult and esoteric teachings. ‘Astrologers’ of today often ignore, flinch or sidetrack the darker, more foreboding areas of the chart (such as the 8th & 12th houses, Pluto and Neptune aspects, and the dark moon goddesses). Tarot readers too struggle to accurately delineate the often dreadful meanings alluded to by the ‘Death’ or ‘Devil’ cards should they show up in a reading. What is most interesting (yet saddest of all) is that in women’s blood mysteries, menstruation is commonly regarded as a ‘curse’, and any inferences to the healing and magical powers held by the menstrual blood makes contemporary folks shudder with disgust, disdain and ridicule.

So with all the planetary action in Scorpio, the lead-up to Wednesday’s Halloween “vamps up” our undivided attention to the dark, gnarly underbelly of our most repressed, unsightly lives, almost at every level.

An electrifying fixed grand cross (see chart) as reflected by the Last Quarter Moon in the dramatic Leo emboldens demons and ghouls from our forgotten past to emerge suddenly and run rife and unrestrained among us. Hell hath no fury like a retrograding Venus scorned through Scorpio. Hidden within the darkest recesses of our psyche, ghosts rise and dance among us, both at the individual and collective level, possessing us to cast phenomenally extreme love/hate spells upon one another. We must be wary of our propensity to hurt one another with the force of our powerful emotions. Underneath the thin veneer, we are a world already divided by the haunts and toxic engrams over differences in race, gender, religion and persuasion. We are torn from our accustomed ‘place of peace’ by the vilifications and aspersions of ignorance and intolerance, achingly displaced, just screaming to be healed.

On Halloween, bonfires are lit with the express intention of scaring away the demonic forces of this, one of the coldest winters yet to come (both hemispheres, both literally and metaphorically); fires to ward off the evil spirits of the wild and savage animals which are particularly prone to prey upon the flocks – the wily wolf, the eagle, the crow, and the fox, among others. So too we see our own ghouls, goblins and ghosts spring out from our closets, under our beds, our attics and our basements. Here they will join the ranks of the unholy and the undead. For who knows what macabre grotesqueries we’ll witness in the days leading up to Halloween.

Indeed, the spookiest thing is that all supernatural beings are held in a peculiar dread these days. Most people look at the spirit world with such distrust and fear. It is by no means improbable that ‘spooky’ circumstances reveal conditions the arise out of a later solar pagan worship, one which revels in some dark, repressed behaviour – ironically seen today to emerge from the ‘houses of the holy’ – of the big churches, parliaments, palaces and senates, corporations, all crusty institutions increasingly held to be somewhat inimical.

So keep your lights on and be mindful of who those true black witches, evil warlocks, rabid werewolves, zombie prions are – those who hemophiliac energy vampires who carry the plague.

They are on the rise and out in force, and if you see them hold them with love; treat them with the sweetness of your ever-loving heart and give them healing… or cleverly out-trick them and run, run, run…